By Squirrel Zoora
This past week has been one of the most challenging weeks of my academic journey. I realised that I wasn’t stressed because writing a journal article is difficult. I was stressed because I had to keep changing hats.
Every new comment and every new direction required me to think differently — to shift from one perspective to another. It wasn’t simply rewriting paragraphs; it was retraining my mind over and over again.
My journey towards publishing my first journal is not as easy as it seems. People often see the final publication, but they don’t see the countless hours of reading, restructuring, adapting, questioning every sentence, and wondering whether you’re moving in the right direction. There were moments when I felt overwhelmed, but each revision taught me something I didn’t know before.
Today, I realised that writing something that doesn’t require citations, references, or academic formatting somehow calms my mind. It reminds me that, beyond the journal, I still enjoy writing simply to express my thoughts. Sometimes, that’s exactly what I need before returning to the next draft with a clearer mind.
Then I reminded myself of something that changed my perspective: Every published paper starts as a draft. No published article begins perfectly. Behind every journal is a story of uncertainty, persistence, resilience, and continuous improvement.
This journey is teaching me that becoming a scholar is not only about publishing papers. It is about embracing uncertainty, adapting with every revision, and having the courage to keep moving forward even when the destination seems distant.
Bismillah. One revision at a time. One step closer to my first published journal, Insha Allah. Hope the book that I just bought yesterday, by Dr Faharol Zubir title “Nobody Tells You THIS”, will show me the direction again after I lost my way.
Typing, deleting, scrolling, editing, searching, writing, and naming all the “ings”, I am still pushing myself to just be on the right path.
Squirrel Zoora (her pen name) is a working mother pursuing her academic goals while juggling another job
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